Out Of The Darkness

Hi, I’m Sophia Majid otherwise known as Mama_Mua. I am a 38 year old celebrity make-up artist and a mum of four children. I live in Edinburgh and I love everything to do with beauty.

I thought I’d start this blog to talk about how I juggle work and kids - and the struggles I’ve had along the way.

So to start off with, let me tell you about my baby, aged eight months and what happened through my last pregnancy.

You’d think that having already had three children, there would be nothing new to learn about pregnancy or the symptoms that come with it.

But I was wrong.

When I began to get terrible insomnia, my problems started to slowly creep up on me.

I got an infection that meant I had to stay in hospital for five days, and it was after that I started to notice a rapid change in my moods.

I was very anxious and this made me to start panicking. The panic was so bad that I decided to return to the hospital and tell them. I was weeping because I couldn’t sleep and I told them that worryingly, I felt like I was going to do something serious if I didn’t get any sleep. They admitted me and sedated me safely so I could sleep.

I didn’t know what was happening to me. I was just on edge and thought it was lack of sleep. My husband didn’t understand it either and thought if I slept then I would feel much better, but it wasn’t that simple.

After being in hospital for a few days I discharged myself so that I could get home to my three children. They gave me sleeping pills and that was that.

But no matter what, I just felt extremely stressed at the slightest thing everything got to me and I felt so down.

As if I had this black cloud over me. I felt anxious and tired and I couldn’t relax or concentrate. I just wanted this feeling to go away and it wouldn’t.

Initially I spoke to some friends about it and they said to me it sounds like prenatal depression. I then went to the doctor and she offered me antidepressants which I really didn’t want as I pregnant and I was scared that I would get hooked on them – or the baby would as I had read that that could happen.

So they put me on a waiting list for counselling, as I was pregnant and high priority I would be seen straight away, but the wait was too much and my situation was too urgent so I went and got private counselling, which was very expensive. The thing was, I felt totally helpless and it didn’t seem to help but after trying hypnotherapy, that helped ease things eventually.

I had been told I was at high risk of post-natal depression once I had had the baby and this really put me off the birth. I was scared that I wasn’t going to feel a bond with my baby and wasn’t going to be able to look after it. So it was a really anxious time.

I feel as though pregnant women will sometimes try to continue and sweep it under the carpet because they don’t know what it is and why they feel so bad. The extreme cases are eventually picked up.

I had heard that people suffered from it but I didn’t know what the symptoms were and didn’t realise it made you feel so bad. Now having suffered from it and read up on it I feel as more emphasis should be given to it as so many women do go through it.

In my next blog, I’ll talk a bit more about how I picked myself up after my pre-natal depression and slowly eased myself back into work – whilst juggling four children! Until next time…